Teaching sound to the deaf

[Leanne]

Over the years I have taught poetry to a few hearing-impaired students and aside from recognising the letters, it's quite difficult for them to understand the sonic quality of poems and why it enriches the language.  

I devised a lesson using different textures to represent sound.  Silks and satins for sussuration, cotton wool for f and p sounds, pine cones for spiky sounds like k... how would you represent sounds using concrete objects?  Or maybe colours?

[UselessBlueprint]

My close cousin, though hearing, is fluent in American Sign Language. It's important to recognize this as a language on it's own, and trying to translate poems (or anything) from English into ASL or vice versa will introduce miscommunications. Its nature as a language gives it an aesthetic quality, visible in ASL jokes, which means one could certainly make poetry in ASL.

When doing this translation, in order to preserve as much effect from the original language as possible, I would probably be a little more diverse in texture selection. P would likely be a drum hit, perhaps with a students hand against the drum. In some cases, maybe the popping of a small balloon. B would be similar, but perhaps a larger ("bassier") drum, or some other object. F and V are fricatives - they deserve objections with friction, and a distinction between voiced and unvoiced - perhaps greater friction on V. That part is particularly difficult. F and P are very different, however. I wouldn't represent them in similar ways. S sounds, are smooth, slithery. H, of course, is aspirated, and complements P- it needs to reinforce to the student that there is air moving. A balloon deflating works well in my mind.

I'm not sure entirely, just a few thoughts. I would only use colours in special situations. I wouldn't want it to alter the visual perception they should already have.

[kolemath]

Brilliant comments on consonants. Vowels may be more tricky. When I teach vowel sounds to ESL students, I mention the size of the mouth. Take the e in feed, the highest, most constricted vowel sound, in terms of mouth shape and sound location. The a in father is the lowest, largest vowel in terms of the oral cavity. Ever seen the color vowel chart? It gives a good physical representation of all vowels' placement in the mouth, though as USB says may too be distracting for the colors themselves

[Achebe]

Over the years I have taught poetry to a few hearing-impaired students and aside from recognising the letters, it's quite difficult for them to understand the sonic quality of poems and why it enriches the language.  

I devised a lesson using different textures to represent sound.  Silks and satins for sussuration, cotton wool for f and p sounds, pine cones for spiky sounds like k... how would you represent sounds using concrete objects?  Or maybe colours?

Very interesting. 
Did they gain an appreciation of sonics from this attempt, or was it just a bridge too far in the end?

[Quixilated]

Leanne, I love this!! It's just brilliant.

It would also be a good way to introduce poetry to very young children (4-5 year olds) and tactile learners.  Definitely using this with my kids.

[Leanne]

It did work -- it wasn't a group of deaf students, just one student at a time in a class full of regular-hearing students, so the student also had a sign interpreter. In fact it worked well for all the students, and it was repeatable.

On the f and p -- the f was the touch of the wool, the p was pulling it apart. Puff. I had to write lines with alliteration and assonance, obviously. Vowels are fun, especially oo -- stretching the hands and then finishing with whatever sound came next, so it became a drama game. We ended up with something like a soundscape.

It was silly, and a bit messy, but kids laughed and that's always a win for me. We also did a bit of painting of sounds but that wasn't quite as successful.

[rayheinrich]

This is so interesting.
And yet again, I'm impressed with the diversity (and smarts) of pigpen people.

Reminds me of a box one of my teachers had when I was in grade-school.
There was a hole in the side just big enough to put your hand in. She'd
put things in the box and we'd put our hand in and try to describe/guess
what it was.